Music to the Malaysian ears!

Every now and then the local government controlled newspapers would faithfully bombard us with descriptions of worthless and meaningless feats considered achievements of sorts by the powers that be. We are going to be building the tallest building of world, the longest ketupat, the longest yee-sang serving, the largest kolam, etcetera, etcetera.

Lennard Lee

A few years ago (2003) when record accomplishing mode was on overdrive, we saw Abdul Malik Mydin lobbying for donations in his bid to be the first Malaysian to swim across the English channel. Donations, he got aplenty!Trivial happenings days leading to the event were published shamelessly in every Malaysian daily. He had a personal physician (Dr Farouk Musa). He completed the feat in 17hrs 42mins. And he was conferred a 'Datukship' for his effort. Less than a year after this swim, in a small column at the bottom of the newspaper page was a small description of a 20 year old Malaysian medical student in Cambridge (Lennard Lee) who, without much fanfare, swam the distance in 9hrs 45min! And his family and friends financed the whole swim! That was that much of it, nobody talked about swimming the English channel till of recent when a young Malaysian girl expressed her desire of the same!

Shilpa Lee a.k.a. Sufiah Yusof

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdul_Malik_Mydin
Then there was a child prodigy, Sufiah Yusof, in 1997, hit the headlines wiyh admission to read Mathematics in Oxford at a tender age of 13! Even though born and bred in UK to a Pakistani father and a Malaysian mother (i.e. the link to Malaysia), Petronas, the national oil company decided to sponsor her studies for community service, only for her to go astray and go 'around'. Also another local child prodigy, Adiputra, who hogged the headlines for being a maths whiz. And he left school at 12 and ran a direct sales company for memory booster!
Just the other day, I heard on my favourite radio station (BFM, again) about a musical prodigy from Sabah, Bobby Chen who was accepted into the prestigious Yehudi Menuhin School of music. He in turn trained fellow Malaysian children and managed to get 23 of them admitted to this world sort after intake of 60 over students annually. Below is the transcript of wikipedia on Bobby Chen followed by a podcast from BFM of an interview with 2 of the Malaysian students accepted this year. How come we do not read about these on our regular mainstream media? I wonder

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Chen_(pianist)

Bobby Chen (pianist)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Acclaimed by the Independent and Guardian in London, Irish Examiner in Ireland, the Straits Times in Singapore, and described by International Piano Magazine as: “...an armour-clad player of complete technique, a thinking musician, a natural Romantic. Young bloods come no better”, Bobby Chen has performed as soloist under conductors Mathias Bamert, Maximiliano Valdes, Lan Shui, Sir Neville Marriner, Lord Menuhin, Pierre-Andre Valade and concerti with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, London Sinfonietta, Warsaw Sinfonia,Singapore Symphony Orchestra and Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra.

Education

A graduate of the Yehudi Menuhin School and the Royal Academy of Music with Ruth Nye and Hamish Milne, Chen appeared three times as soloist at London’s Wigmore Hall, and performed at Italy’s Fazioli Hall, Beijing’s Forbidden City Concert Hall, Dublin’s National Concert Hall, London’s Cadogan Hall and Purcell Room, Singapore’s Victoria Concert Hall and Kuala Lumpur’s Dewan Petronas at the Twin Towers. Festival appearances include UK’s South Bank Prokofiev Festival and Worcester Three Choirs Festival, Sao Paulo’s Musica Nova Contemporary Music Festival and Sweden’s Lidköping Music Festival.

Recordings

Yehudi Menuhin founded famous school in 1963,
 created the ideal conditions in which musically
 gifted children might develop their potential to the
 full on stringed instruments and piano.

Chen has made live broadcasts for Radio Television Hong Kong and Pianoforte Chicago (USA), and his six commercial recordings include two solo CDs for Jaques Samuel Recordings, a recording for the ‘Cello Classics’ label with cellist Leonid Gorokhov, a solo piano disc for SOMM Recordings and piano trio recordings for Illuminate Records and Toccata Classics.

Since 1963 the School has expanded and now educates more than sixty 

talented boys and girls between 8 and 18. The range of instruments 

is limited to violin, viola, cello, double bass, guitar and piano. 

All pupils sing in one of two choirs and all string players also 

play the piano. In 1973 the School was accorded special status as a 

Centre of Excellence for the Performing Arts. Since 1975 pupils at 

the school have been funded by the Department for Children, Schools

and Families and only pay a contribution to the cost of their child's

education according to their means. It is intended that children 

should be able to attend the school, once selected for their 

exceptional musical ability, whatever their parents' 

financial background.